This invention relates to cosmetic material applicators having an actuating mechanism for imparting limited reciprocatory motion to an applicator head, as well as to cosmetic material dispensers including such applicators, and to actuating mechanisms useful therein.
One particularly important field of use of the invention, to which detailed reference will be made herein for purposes of illustration, is the application of mascara to a user's eyelashes.
A typical present-day mascara dispenser is a small, hand-held object of cylindrical or other elongated shape, suitable to be carried in a user's purse or pocket. It includes an open-necked container for holding a quantity of mascara, a manually graspable cap for closing the container neck, and a mascara brush or like applicator head mounted at the free end of a stem that projects from the interior of the cap so that the brush is inserted into the contained mascara when the cap is seated on the neck. The brush is commonly an axially elongated array of free-ended fibers or bristles which are clamped centrally in, and radiate outwardly from, a twisted wire core, such brushes being referred to as twisted-in-wire brushes. The cap, stem and brush together constitute an applicator for transporting mascara from the container to the eyelashes and applying the mascara on the lashes, with the cap serving as a handle for manipulation of the brush by the user.
As will be understood, the brush picks up mascara from the container while immersed therein, and conveys it to the eyelashes upon withdrawal of the brush from the container, with excess mascara being removed from the brush by a wiper element in the container neck. Holding the cap, the user strokes the lashes with the mascara-laden brush to deposit and distribute mascara on the lashes. Thereafter, the cap and brush are returned to the container to pick up more mascara or to reclose the container.
To achieve full and uniform coating of the lashes, it has heretofore been proposed that the brush should be manipulated so as to stroke the lashes along their length from base to tip, while imparting to the brush a back-and-forth movement across the lashes. This combination of motions, however, is manipulatively difficult to perform with a conventional mascara applicator.